


recipe for forgiveness

by thepensword



Series: de la lune [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: (+ a little bit of taakitz whoops), Brownies, Character Study, Family, Forgiveness, Found Family, Gen, I'm making it a thing, Platonic Relationships Galore, Relationship Study, Team as Family, recipe fic, yeah that's a thing now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 20:04:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15008393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepensword/pseuds/thepensword
Summary: In the back of the cupboard is an old box of recipe cards. It has been there for a very, very long time.Today, Lucretia uncovers it. And today, there are some who are perhaps ready to forgive.(Or: batches of brownies over the years, and their ability to bring people together again.)





	recipe for forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> i have a lot of emotions about lucretia and also i had the idea to write a fic wrapped around a recipe so...this happened.
> 
> the embedded recipe is my go-to brownie recipe and you can find it [here](https://smittenkitchen.com/2012/08/my-favorite-brownies/).
> 
> also i'm posting this at fucking uh. 1am. bc i'm leaving the country for the next three weeks and i had to produce some content before i left. here it is! enjoy

**preheat oven to 350˚**

 

In the back of the cupboard is an old box full of cards. The cards are handwritten and irreparably stained, and on each is something precious: a recipe.

They don’t get used very often. At this point, Taako has the recipes long-since memorized; he will proclaim to anyone that will listen that he could bake brownies in his sleep. Magnus had pointed out the flaw in this—elves don’t need to sleep so there would be no way to prove he wasn’t cheating—and Taako had responded by attempting to sleep-walk his way through the recipe and ended up nearly burning down the Starblaster.

That’s not the point, though. The point is, he knows these recipes almost better than he knows his own name.

(Better than he’d known his history. A hundred years turned to static, but those recipe cards hadn’t been something Lucretia had thought to erase.)

They’d been sitting in that cupboard on the Starblaster, collecting dust and cobwebs, unused and forgotten. Until now.

Lucretia blows the dust away and pulls the box from the shelf. Some of these are in her handwriting, transcribed from Taako’s narration, while others are the chaotic and extravagant evidence of Taako’s own hand. But they are there, all thirty-seven of them, and they are full of memories.

Lucretia holds this box of recipe cards in the dimly lit kitchen of the Starblaster and knows she’s found a peace offering.

 

* * *

 

**butter**

 

“See,” said Taako, gesturing to the saucepan. “I like to put the butter in first. That way, there’s a layer in between the chocolate and the pan so the chocolate doesn’t burn. Got it?”

Lucretia nodded. She was sitting on the counter with her best blue-ink pen and a crisp new card. Her hair was pulled back into a braid—Lup’s doing—but it wasn’t quite long enough to stay, so pieces of it were falling into her face. She brushed a strand behind her ear impatiently and turned her neck to look into the saucepan with its rapidly melting stick of butter.

“Make sure you write that down,” said Taako. “If Lup and I are both dead and Magnus decides he wants brownies all of a sudden, it’s absolutely crucial that all safeguards are in place to prevent that chucklefuck from destroying my beautiful kitchen. Capiche?”

Lucretia had long since written down the bit about putting the butter in first. She turned the index card around to show him. “I got it.”

“Good.” Taako added the chocolate to the pan and the air filled with the easily recognizable scent. From down the hallway, there came the sound of something falling over and then Barry shouted, “Are you making brownies?”

“You bet your _ass!_ ” yelled Taako at the top of his lungs. Lucretia hid a laugh behind her hand and when she looked up, Taako was watching her. His lips were pursed slightly, his eyebrows furrowed.

“Why do you do that?” asked Taako. Lucretia blinked, confused.

“Do what?”

“Hide that you're laughing.” He pointed at her with his chocolate-covered spatula and frowned. “You do it like. All the time. Whenever you laugh or get upset or anything, you stop yourself. Why?”

Oh.

Lucretia thought of the cold, clean marble pillars of her childhood home. She thought of hours spent alone in her room, of the emptiness of the vast hallways. She thought of the kitchen—larger than this one, cleaner than this one, but so much less alive. She’d go down there, sometimes, and eat sweets snuck to her by the cook and listen to the servants gossip, but her mother did not approve and so Lucretia learned to stay away from the kitchen with all of its alluring sights and smells.

What would her mother think of her now, sitting on the counter, baking brownies with a bright and eccentric elf?

Said elf was watching her expectantly. Lucretia cleared her throat awkwardly and looked away. “Um. Well. It’s just...growing up, my mother....it’s not proper, to laugh unrestrainedly. Or to shout. Or...you know.”

Taako’s frown deepened. “So, what, your mom tried to keep you from living? No offense, Luc, but that’s shitty parenting right there.”

“She wasn’t—”

And then Taako was shoving that chocolate-covered spatula into her mouth, effectively cutting off whatever feeble protest she’d been about to offer and flooding her senses with the sweet, slightly bitter taste of the butter-sugar-chocolate concoction coming together on the stovetop.

“You’re with us, now, Lucretia,” said Taako firmly. “We’re your new family. And on this ship, we live like people instead of statues. Capiche?”

Lucretia smiled around the spatula and, for once, did not bother to wipe the chocolate from her nose. “Okay,” she said softly.

“Good. Now pay attention with that pen of yours, you missed a few steps.”

 

* * *

 

**chocolate**

 

The kitchen is warm.

Taako sighs contentedly as he wraps his arms around Kravitz’s neck, rising up on his toes to kiss his boyfriend lightly on the lips. Kravitz smiles into it and runs gentle fingers through his hair.

“Everything alright, love?” asks Kravitz. Taako moves to the pantry and pulls out the small box of dark chocolate. He sets it down on the counter and pulls the slender bars out, absentmindedly unwrapping them and tossing the wrappings into the trashcan near the stove.

“Mm. Just tired. Running a school is a lotta work, you know? I mean, who’da thunk?”

Kravitz chuckles, a deep rumbling sound like the dull roar of the ocean. It’s the kind of laugh that Taako can feel in his very bones, the kind that sends warm tingles running through him. God, he loves this man and his beautiful, beautiful laughter.

“I’d imagine it would be. But it’s going well?”

Taako shrugs. “As well as it can, I guess. Ren’s doing most of the work, honestly. She seems to know what she’s doing. Or at least maybe she cares more. I dunno, we’re managing.”

“That’s good.”

Silence falls comfortably across them like a blanket, heavy and warm with their breathing. Taako is so grateful in this moment that he can have this; that after a lifetime of fighting and surviving and learning not to trust, he can have a home, and someone to come home to.

Kravitz clears his throat in the way that means he’s nervous about whatever he’s going to say next, and Taako tenses reflexively. “So,” says Kravitz.

“Mm?”

“Lucretia came by earlier.”

The chocolate bar snaps beneath Taako's fingers, louder than it should be in the now-silent kitchen.

Of course she did. Lucretia has been trying to speak with him at regular intervals for the last year, and Taako has been consistently avoiding her. He knows what she wants—she wants reconciliation, something he’s not ready to give.

_Snap. Snap._

It’s hurting both of them. She was like his sister, once. They had been less of a crew and more of a family, and Lucretia, so painfully young for the horrors they’d faced, had been theirs to protect. Then she’d torn it all to pieces and for that he cannot forgive.

And it hurts. It hurts so, so much. But he doesn’t care.

“What did you tell her?” asks Taako, monotone, not even looking up. Breaking the chocolate into pieces like this does not require so much concentration and they are both well aware of that fact, but Kravitz does not call him out on it and Taako is content to take out his rage on the now excessively broken chocolate.

“I told her the truth. That you were out, that you’d be back later. She said she has something to give you.”

“Whatever it is,” says Taako, and pulls out his wand to aggressively light the stove, “I don’t want it.”

Kravitz sighs, long and slow. “Taako, it’s been a year. You can’t keep doing this. It’s not fair to either of you.”

“I don’t care,” says Taako. He sounds petulant, even to his own ears. Like a child. And a particularly bratty one, at that—even Angus, an actual child, would never sound quite so immaturely peevish. (Angus is not by any means an ordinary child, but it’s not like Taako knows enough children to form a baseline for their behavior.)

The butter and chocolate melt together in the pan, alluring swirls following the path of Taako’s wooden spoon through the mixture. This is an old recipe of his, one that he’d never quite forgotten—one of the things she had left him, minus the associated happy memories.

She’d been in those memories. The sudden recognition of her absence had hurt just as much as the absences of the others, and the instinctual relief at seeing her again had been as strong as anything, but he’s not ready to forgive.

“But you love her,” says Kravitz. Kravitz, beautiful, loving Kravitz, who tries so hard to understand but never can. Even he cannot know what it is to realize you have lost everything and didn't even notice.

Taako jabs at the still-melting stick of butter with more force than is strictly necessary. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says.

Another sigh. Kravitz crosses to stand beside him at the stove, rubbing a hand along his back and pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “Just think about it, alright? You owe her that, at least.”

 _I don’t owe her anything,_ is what Taako thinks, but he doesn’t bother saying it out loud. Instead, he bobs his head once in a sort of noncommittal half-acceptance and removes the pan from the heat.

 

* * *

 

**sugar**

 

“I can’t believe this,” complained Taako loudly. “I mean, of _all_ things for a world not to have.”

He’d run out of sugar, and the last world hadn’t had any. He was pissed, and everyone knew it because he made _sure_ everyone knew it. So hear they were, trudging down the dusty road in search of some place to buy sugar.

Lucretia had come along because there wasn’t really anything else to do at the moment. She’d grabbed her journal and her pen and laced up her boots, prepared to follow Taako on whatever ridiculous adventure was sure to unfold from what should be a simple shopping trip.

They’d brought Magnus along because Taako said he needed an extra pair of hands. Magnus had wanted to stay with Fisher—said he was telling bedtime stories, despite it being the middle of the afternoon—but Taako was never one to give in without an argument. And so it was that the three of them found themselves walking aimlessly down the road beneath the midday sun.

“This sucks,” said Magnus. “Why are we doing this again?”

Taako sighed loudly and jabbed a finger in Magnus’ direction. “Look,” he said, scowling. “Do you want brownies or not?”

“Well, yeah, but couldn’t you just transmute—”

Taako waved his hand in the air and pretended to be offended. “You can’t do that with brownies, dumbass. Brownies are sacred.”

Lucretia smiled and quickly sketched the scene into her journal, making sure to capture their expressions. She loved them, she loved this; even the friendly squabbles were so much more intimate than anything she had known as a child.

“Hey, Luce, whatcha scribbling?” asked Magnus, peering over her shoulder. She showed him the sketch and he threw his head back with a bark of laughter, reaching out one large hand to ruffle her hair the way a brother might. “Damn, you gotta teach me to draw like that. Taako, look!”

Taako looked. Then he scoffed and flipped his braid over his shoulder, but there was a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Less drawing, more walking,” he said. “I want to get this sugar sometime this year, thank you.”

So Lucretia closed her journal and tucked her pen behind her ear and followed her friends down the road.

(A group of roadside bandits, some heated bargaining, and one market-wide brawl later, they made it back to the Starblaster with singed hair and dirty clothing. They were tired and bruised but hey, at least they got the sugar.

That night, Taako whipped up what was possibly his best batch of brownies yet. Lucretia ate hers with a smile on her face and recorded the happy expressions of her friends into her journal.)

 

* * *

 

**eggs**

 

It is just after sunset when Lup breaks his door down.

“Taako!” she shouts. Her voice reverberates down the hallway and Taako scowls. Her entrance had made him jump, just as he was trying to separate an egg for his brownies. As a result, he missed the bowl entirely and the whole egg splattered to the floor.

Goddamnit.

“Lup for the _love_ of—”

She’s in the kitchen in seconds, throwing an arm around his neck and dragging him outside. If it was anyone else, he would probably already be flinging spells—no one is allowed to touch him or to infringe on his dignity in such a way—but this is Lup, so he submits to the treatment.

The sky is a deep violet, streaked with pink and light blue. The first stars are beginning to appear high above.

“Lup, what the _fuck—_ ”

She brings them to a stop and points skywards. “Look,” says Lup.

Taako frowns. “Uh, yeah. That’s...the sky. So?”

“So that’s where we came from,” says Lup. “Look at it. Beyond that are the hundred realities we passed through. We lived and died and loved in those realities and we did it together.”

“What’s your point?”

“Lucretia lived and died and loved in those realities too,” says Lup. She’s right up in his face now, and there is fire blooming in her eyes. “Right alongside us. We were a family, and you didn’t just lose me. You lost her, too.”

Taako feels something stirring in his gut that’s a little like poison and a little like guilt. “That was her choice,” he says, and his voice is harsh and jagged like broken glass. “She threw everything away. She threw _us_ away, like we were...like _garbage._ ”

Lup throws her hands up. “She did what she thought she had to! And so yeah, maybe she fucked up in a pretty major way, but you’re telling me one colossal fuck-up is enough for you to throw away your family? I’ve fucked up before too, Taako. Would you throw me away?”

“No, you’re my _sister_ —”

“So was she!” shouts Lup. Her words cut through the air like knives and knock the breath from Taako’s lungs, because the hard truth is that Lup is right. He won’t admit it, refuses to even think it, but Lup is right as Kravitz was right, as the voice in his head is right.

Lup sighs. It’s a heavy sound, the weight of so many years riding atop it. “Just think about what’s important to you,” she says after a moment. “And maybe decide whether you really care more about your pride than your family.”

“Lup—”

“I have to go to work, but I’ll be back in an hour for some brownies. You better think about what I said and you better have an answer for me. Capiche?”

And then she’s gone, and Taako is alone but for the stars in the sky and the thoughts churning a storm inside his head.

 

* * *

 

**vanilla**

 

“No,” said Taako, voice rising so high up in his register that it’s nearly squeaking. “No, no, _no_. _Merle_.”

Lucretia stifled a giggle and quickly sketched their expressions. Taako, hands over his heart, eyes blown wide and scandalized. Merle, eyebrows raised in an imitation of innocence, smelling very strongly and sweetly of vanilla, a small brown bottle clutched in his hand.

“What?” said Merle.

“ _You cannot use my highly expensive vanilla extract as cologne, Merle!”_

Merle blinked. “Why not?”

He knew why not. Lucretia was sure of it. Just as she was mostly sure he’d only used it in the first place to get a rise out of Taako. Nothing much had happened this cycle, and certain members of the crew were getting antsy.

Taako let out a noise similar to that of a dying whale and snatched the bottle of extract away from Merle. “I am never baking for you ever again, old man. _Never_.” He waved the hand not currently holding the vanilla in the direction of the brownie ingredients stacked on the counter and made that whale noise again. “No brownies. Every again. _Deal with it_.”

Merle’s innocent expression dropped into one more resembling horror. “What,  _never?_ ”

“ _Never_ ,” repeated Taako. He ran an exasperated hand through his bangs and then pointed at Lucretia. “Take note of that. On this day, Merle Highchurch lost all rights to Taako-baked foodstuffs. For the _rest_ of your _miserable fucking life_.”

Lucretia nodded and scribbled down the encounter. She added a footnote, too: _by my predictions, Taako will have forgotten this by the end of the cycle._

“Good,” said Taako. Then he screamed again, quietly and in the back of his throat. “I can’t—I _hate_ you.” And then he swept out of the room, vanilla in one hand while he used the other to flip Merle off.

Merle sighed once he’d left. “Damn, I really wanted those brownies.”

“Don’t worry,” said Lucretia, and patted his shoulder comfortingly. “He’ll forget soon enough.”

“Not if he finds out I also used it as mouthwash.”

And Lucretia. Stopped.

“You _what?"_

 

* * *

 

**salt**

 

Taako has met a lot of good people and made a lot of friends over his time on Faerun. And maybe those twelve years of forgetting were painful, and maybe the memories of his time with the Bureau felt a little like rubbing salt in old wounds, but he knows he will never regret the relationships he forged during that time.

And one of those relationships, perhaps one of the most important of them all—though he’d never admit it out loud—is the one that he’d formed with Angus McDonald.

There is something very special about Angus. He is bright, he is intelligent, he is immensely gifted in both the academic sense and the magic sense, and most importantly he has taken to following Taako around like a lost puppy.

Taako bitches about it sometimes. Often. And loudly, too. But he’ll never tell Angus to leave, because maybe he likes having the kid around.

He can’t explain it, though deep down he suspects it might have something to do with the childhood he’d lived alone but for Lup. With the disgust he feels at the idea of any child having to be so alone. And Angus, however old he may pretend to be, is still a child, and he does not even have a sibling to keep him company.

(“Wow, never thought you’d take so well to parenthood,” Lup had joked once. Taako had laughed it off and acted appropriately scornful, but even now he cannot deny the warm feeling that had settled in his chest at the words.)

Right now, Angus is visiting for a magic lesson. But it’s cold out, and it's the end of the day, so Taako had turned their magic lesson into an impromptu cooking lesson.

“Wow, sir,” says Angus, eyes wide over the spoon he’d just pulled back out of his mouth. “That’s really tasty.”

Taako snorts. “You bet your ass it is,” he says. “Taako don’t mess around. Hey, Ango, grab the salt for me, will you pumpkin?”

Angus climbs off of his stool and carries it with him to the cabinet. He pulls out the box of salt, shakes it, and then frowns.

“It sounds like it’s almost empty, sir.”

“Hm.” Taako pretends to think, setting down his spatula as he does so. “Alright, then, time for a taste of some genuine Taako food-magic. Ready, bubbelah? Pay attention and you might learn something.”

Angus nods excitedly and leans in close, eyes wide behind his glasses and smile tugging at his face. It is undeniably adorable and Taako hates how far gone this kid has brought him.

A wave of his wand and some unnecessary sparkles and the sugar he has scooped into a dish becomes courser. Taako sticks a finger in it and licks it—it’s salt, alright, just has he’d known it would be.

“Can I taste, sir?” asks Angus. Taako pushes the bowl towards him and takes great joy in the way Angus’ nose wrinkles at salt hitting his tongue.

“Keep practicing and you’ll be able to do that too,” says Taako, and sprinkles some salt into the chocolatey mixture sitting on the unlit stove. “So you were telling me about your day?”

“Oh, yes sir!” Angus sits up straighter, practically radiating enthusiasm. “Well, Lucas gave me the day off from the school, so I figured I’d try and find a case to solve. But then Ms. Lucretia called and said she needed help finding suitable recruits for the new Bureau and—oh.”

Taako’s expression, as much as he’d tried to hide it, had soured at the mention of Lucretia. Lup’s words from two weeks ago were still resonating in his thoughts and it just wasn’t _fair_ that every attempt to avoid the problem was foiled. Why did people have to keep bringing it up?

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to upset you,” says Angus earnestly. There’s a brief pause, and Taako opens his mouth to laugh it off, but then, tentatively, Angus says, “Why don’t you two talk anymore?”

“You know what she did,” says Taako, and the words have more bite to them than he’d intended. Angus flinches and immediately Taako feels guilty, but not guilty enough to take it back.

“She didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Taako scoops the flour and dumps it in the pan with enough force that it billows up in a fluffy white cloud and coats the stovetop. He can’t bring himself to care.

Angus looks away, and he’s hunching his shoulders and looking very small and _fuck why does anyone let Taako do anything_. “I’m sorry, sir,” he says again. “I just think you two care about each other a whole lot and it’s sad that you won’t talk anymore.”

God, this would be so much easier if everyone would stop being right all the damn time.

“No, _I’m_ sorry, Ango,” says Taako wearily. His stirring motions slow, and then stop entirely. “You’re right.”

Angus perks up. “I am?”

Taako sighs and reaches out a hand to ruffle his hair. “Yeah,” he says. “You are.”

 

* * *

 

**flour**

 

Taako stress-baked. And right now, with the world splintering, with Lup gone, he was baking more than ever.

Well. She couldn’t be sure that that was what he was still doing. She couldn’t really be sure of anything. She hoped he was happy.

She hoped they were all happy.

But the point was, Taako stress-baked, and so the ingredients remained strewn across the countertop. He’d made brownies, last; the bag of flour was still sitting out, top folded down so it wasn’t completely open to the air.

Lucretia rolled the top down further and secured it. She walked to the pantry and put it away, up on that shelf that she could only reach on her tiptoes. She did this calmly. She continued to breathe.

Her eyes were level with the box of recipe cards.

The bag of flour slipped from her grasp and plummeted to the floor in a massive cloud of white. It covered her skirts, it covered her robe—red turned to white, like static—

Lucretia gasped desperately for air and sank to the floor as the tears she’d been holding back sprang forth. She held herself and sobbed harder than she ever had before, harder than she’d cried even in Cycle 65, when she’d been alone—back then, she’d known she’d have them back at the end of the year. But now, they could be gone forever, and it was all because of her.

Not for the first time, Lucretia doubted her decision. But it was too late to turn back.

“Just for a little while,” she whispered to herself, and curled shaking hands into determined fists. “Just until I get the relics. Then I can get them back. It’s just for a little while. Just for...just for a little while.”

There was flour all across the floor, the pantry walls, the shelves. Taako would be horrified, or at least he would pretend to be—he could clean it up in an instant, with barely a wave of his wand.

Taako could fix it. But Taako was gone, and so were the others.

It was only Lucretia, now. Lucretia, all alone in a broken world.

It was up to her to fix it on her own.

 

* * *

 

**bake for 25 to 30 minutes**

 

Lucretia steals herself to knock on the door. This is not the first time she’s done this. She’s sure it won’t be the last.

He’s never answered her knock. She’s stopped being disappointed.

But today is different, because today Taako opens the door.

“Oh,” says Lucretia, and stares at him for a full thirty seconds with her mouth agape. Taako stares back, expression unreadable.

_She hadn’t expected him to open the door._

“What do you want?” asks Taako.

“Um. Can I...can I come in?”

Taako doesn’t even blink. He just steps to the side and pulls the door open. Lucretia walks inside like she’s walking on glass, like Taako’s a bomb and any wrong move could set him off.

In a way, he is a bomb. Lucretia hadn’t expected to get this far, and she can’t afford to blow it.

Taako leads her to the kitchen and gestures for her to sit at the table. She does so, running a nervous hand through her short-cropped hair. She’s been letting it grow out, somewhat, so that it is no longer shaved so close to her skull; perhaps it is a desperate grasp for times gone by, when she had been younger, when she had not made such a horrible mistake.

(When they were a family still.)

“What are you here for?” asks Taako as he sits in the chair opposite. His voice is still carefully, chillingly blank, and it takes every ounce of will Lucretia can muster not to wince at the sound. Instead, she reaches into her bag and pulls out the box of recipe cards.

Taako’s mouth opens and then closes as she sets it on the table between them. Some unnameable emotion flits briefly across his face and then vanishes.

“What’s this?”

“It’s your recipes,” says Lucretia. “I know you have them memorized, but I found them and I thought they might be nice to—”

He’s opening the box and rifling through the cards and for a moment he looks so terribly sad that Lucretia chokes on her own words. She wishes she could hug him. (Wishes she still had the right to even touch him.)

“Lucretia,” says Taako, and then stops. He’s holding the brownie recipe, now.

_You’re with us, now, Lucretia. We’re your new family._

“I’m sorry,” says Lucretia, as twelve years of carefully cultivated dignity slip away and she’s a young girl again, still hurting from the loss of her world and taking solace in the family she has created. “Taako, I’m so, so sorry, and I wish I could go back and stop myself and I have never regretted anything more and I wish I’d made _sure_ you were still safe and happy and I’m so _sorry,_ Taako, I—”

And then he is hugging her, and she is hugging him back, and she is crying and he is crying and she hasn’t felt so horribly young in a long, long time.

“I know,” murmurs Taako into the top of her head. “And I can’t forget what you did to me. I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen like everyone else is doing.”

Lucretia flinches, hard. She knew that, she _knew_ forgiveness was too much to ask from him—

“But maybe we can move past it, hey? Maybe, um. Hm. Maybe we can try to, uh, to move on.”

“Really?”

A sigh, long and tired and heavy with so many emotions. “Yeah, Luce,” says Taako quietly. “And...I’m sorry too.”

And they hold each other and slowly learn to forgive.

 

* * *

 

**if desired, dust with powdered sugar**

 

Lup walks in the door, sees Lucretia sitting at the kitchen table, and _screams_.

“Hi, Lup,” says Lucretia weakly, and then Lup is pulling her to her feet and hugging her tightly and jumping up and down like an overexcited puppy.

“Oh my gods oh my _gods_ are you two _talking?"_

Taako snorts from his position by the stove. “Hello to you, too.”

“ _Taako did you two make up?”_

He rolls his eyes. “I guess.”

“Oh my gods,” says Lup. “Oh my gods I am calling _everyone_.”

And she does.

Taako and Lucretia had held each other for a good fifteen minutes, and then they had sat and talked. They talked and talked and talked, and Lucretia had felt the icy place in her heart start to thaw. Because as they talked, Taako forgave, and for the first time in twelve years, Lucretia had her brother back.

“Alright,” Taako had said after a while. “Let’s use this olive branch of yours.” And he’d pulled out the recipe card for brownies.

Now they’re here. Lup had found them and called their friends, and within a half hour they’d descended on the house. Kravitz is here, and Barry is here, and Magnus and Merle and Davenport and even little Angus. And they’re smiling and laughing and it has been a long time since Lucretia has felt so warm.

They’ve come a long way to reach this point. They’ve fought and loved and died and lived, all so they can have this. So they can smile without danger hanging like stormclouds overhead.

“See,” says Taako to an interested-looking Angus. “You put the butter in first, so the chocolate doesn’t burn. It says it right there on the card.”

He turns his head towards Lucretia and smiles a secret smile, and Lucretia smiles back.

Her family is together again, and bigger than ever. Better yet, they have nothing to fear.

Lucretia sighs contentedly and adds another line to the pocket notebook she’d never quite managed to stop carrying. In neat swirls of ink, the warm scene is caught on paper, a moment captured so that it will never be forgotten. (There has already been too much forgetting.)

She’s made mistakes. They all have. But it is time to move on.

Today, thinks Lucretia, is a good day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comment below or come visit me on [tumblr](https://thepensword.tumblr.com). i love hearing from you.
> 
> bye!


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